A memo from Mike Marasigan

Some guys would refer to Mike as “anak ng Diyos.”

A FEW months after joining

BusinessWorld in May 1989, Hernani “Nani” P. de Leon received a memo from a young editor.

It was from Michael “Mike” D. Marasigan, who, at that time, was the paper’s city editor who would build BusinessWorld’s online presence years later.

Since Marasigan was also in charge of supervising reporters and several editors, De Leon saw the writing on the wall.

Upon receiving Marasigan’s memo, De Leon promptly offered to quit.

“I approached Mike since he was supervising the new editors to ask if I should file a resignation letter,” said De Leon.

At that time, De Leon covered the environment and agriculture beats and was still unfamiliar with the length and breadth of Marasigan’s management style.

“I know what you have in mind, don’t do it,” was Mike’s reply even before Nani could say anything.

For Nani, this gesture showed Marasigan’s generosity, both personal and professional.

Marasigan, 60, died inside his car after two unidentified men on a motorcycle shot him six times in the chest and twice in the neck early Thursday evening. His brother, Christopher, who was also shot, was pronounced dead upon arriving at a nearby hospital.

“I owe him a lot,” said Nani, who would later become BusinessWorld’s city editor himself and is now retired and living in Davao City.

Months after issuing Nani the memo, Mike proved that he wasn’t just some uptight corporate bureaucrat out to prop himself up while putting other people down.

“In the succeeding months, I topped the number of bylines and tag lines among the reporters, getting as many as 60 a month, and Mike who was then closing the Nation page was partly responsible for that,” Nani said noting many of those bylines also came from the Economy page of Ronald Romero, news editor during that time, who is close to Mike.

When BusinessWorld’s online operation was formalized in 1994, Nani took over as city editor after the company’s founder, president, and editor Raul Locsin appointed Mike as BusinessWorld Online, Inc.’s ( BWOI) chief operating officer.

“He was so influential and very close to the Locsins during that time that some guys would refer to him as ‘ anak ng Diyos’ [children of God],” said Nani.

In 1997, Nani resigned and moved to Davao City noting it was his family’s decision.

“Still, we would communicate regularly through phone calls and e-mail and in 1999, I saw him alighting from a cab about 10 meters away from my shop here in Davao and was yelling when he saw me open the door.”

“Nasa Mandaya [Hotel] si Tangkad (the tall one, referring to the late Mr. Locsin), gusto kang kausapin — job offer,” Mike said. “Before I knew what it was all about, I was already signing an appointment paper as Mindanao bureau chief for a UNESCO project that would help community papers go online. Thanks to Mike’s recommendation.”

A few years later, Mike resigned from BusinessWorld but he visited Davao frequently.

During these visits, Mike helped distressed mining companies, the banana industry, and other groups, according to Nani.

“We talked about his frustrations and his plans but we hardly discussed issues related to his

clients,” Nani said. “There was a time he questioned a mining story written by a South Cotabato-based BusinessWorld correspondent and I told him flatly that I was standing by what the correspondent wrote, he replied ‘no problem.’”

Whenever he was in town, “Mike would randomly call me by phone asking me to join him for dinner,” Nani said.

There were times it would just be Mike and Nani but on many occasions, also with Mike’s close friends M.J. Maranon and Noel Mesina.

Mike told Nani he would someday retire in Davao.

“I could be wrong but I think he bought a residential property in a premium marina project fronting Davao City in the island city of Samal,” Nani said.

Besides inquiring about Davao property prices, Mike also asked how much I spent to build my modest house, Nani said.

“He wanted to see my place,” Nani recounted. “But he did not show up and instead texted me that something urgent came up and that his flight schedule has changed.”

Nani didn’t have an inkling that that text message would be the last he would receive from his former boss, an online news pioneer who never got the chance to retire.